Simple to say that it is possible, it is nothing to do with Government doing it, it is a business opportunity.
In a country where there are thousands of entrepreneurs, it is a huge opportunity to show case and make your money. The need to build a 100 would help in building the next 1000 not only in India but abroad.
Strategic Opportunity Analysis of the Global Smart City Market by a Frost and Sullivan, talks about this opportunity. Just like how Parachute is a global brand when it comes to cocounut oil, you would have the L&T and Gammon to grow into smart city builders of the future. After all they have their investors to answer, is it not? See the section on smart city providers, as of now a lot of work by IBM/Accenture on smart cities is done in India, it is time to see a few Indian names there and this is an opportunity to prove a point.
http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=SA&subtype=WH&htmlfid=UVW12372USEN#loaded
SO what makes a smart city?
Five of the following eight parameters make it a smart city
Smart Education
Smart Energy
Smart Building
Smart Healthcare
Smart infrastructure
Smart Technology
Smart Citizen
It is not in isolation that they would work, they would work as an Integrated one self. Are the technologies available to do such ? Yes, it is already in use and available. Is it possible to build and progress into a smart city in ten years. YES. It is not outlandish or an utopian dream.
Pick up a small city, for example Ponneri north of Chennai is selected to become one of the smart cities, A population of 24000 today. A good way to test your skills and improve upon the services. Once the city is developed to become smarter, it is a matter of time that the model can be replicated across India. The tools, the software would be in place. As they say the cookie cutter approach works once you have the first cookie baked and tested to be good.
As the word says "Smart" that is what it is, ICT as a means of providing an integrated platform is what a smart city would do best.
Integration is the key element to smartness, and this integration is possible through ICT. What it means is that we would leverage less resources to achieve the same level of quality of life or better.
You can envisage where you can get all your Government work done through the web, you can plan your trip to use the least amount of time or least of the resources. How best the city as a being manages its traffic. How efficiently you educate your students and also provide them with transport and also the necessary tools to leverage the technologies that makes the city smart.
As rightly said, there is no upper limit to the smartness, Stockholm invested first in Smart Mobility, a simple green corridor that is built if you travel at 40 kmph between traffic stops is a level of smartness. Using ICT at school to deliver curriculum is smartness.
IT is doing what you are already doing in a more efficient way. eGovernance is an area where the Government has a big way to let you know that they are building smart city communities, these can be , simple way to apply for your Birth Certificate, paying your bills online to be able to see how much you consumed and what is your Carbon footprint. The major problem is non availability of data to make informed decisions, and this is exactly what the smart cities would do.
Instead of an Ad-hoc decision you have the tools and data to take informed decision, the biggest difference between a smart and not smart city.
Saying Government always squanders money or the results are pathetically bad across the board is a wrong generalization.
A lot of smartness is being built into how we work and what we do on a daily basis. Many think that what has e-governance has to do with Smart City. A smart city is one which reduces resources required to provide the same level or higher level of services.
What is that makes a city smart, we can have parameters to say, that the passenger kilometer spent on pubilc transport as a measure, the time spent to get things done at a Government office. If you do not need to move out of your office/home to get a lot of things that you do today, it is smartness, why by investing on a server (Can be money.. I am using it here as a metaphor) if i reduce the number of motor-cyle or car kilometres, this is a level of smartness.
Think of health care delivery, or as you said the power that you consume, if i design smart cities to leverage the heat or cold of the local climate to power my systems or to cool my systems, I am making a smart decision.
As for building 100 smart cities in 10 years, many cities will transition to become smart cities, so having a vision to build smart cities is nothing wrong. May be in years following you might not differentiate between a smart city and not a smart city.
India has one major advantage, we have the people and resources to write code to run these "Internet of things". IoT is often an integral part of smart cities, and a seed money of 7000 crores is good enough, and that is the kind of money that would push the IBM, Siemens of the world to see and present a case as to how to build such cities.
Economics of building such cities will triumph and we will see that many an entrepreneur will see it as an opportunity. What these cities may do, is for it to trigger other cities to provide the same set of opportunities and services as the new smart cities. And people would demand such services, it is like a chain reaction, and instead of looking at it as a 7000 crores down the drain, take it as an impetus to start the reaction.
In a country where there are thousands of entrepreneurs, it is a huge opportunity to show case and make your money. The need to build a 100 would help in building the next 1000 not only in India but abroad.
Strategic Opportunity Analysis of the Global Smart City Market by a Frost and Sullivan, talks about this opportunity. Just like how Parachute is a global brand when it comes to cocounut oil, you would have the L&T and Gammon to grow into smart city builders of the future. After all they have their investors to answer, is it not? See the section on smart city providers, as of now a lot of work by IBM/Accenture on smart cities is done in India, it is time to see a few Indian names there and this is an opportunity to prove a point.
http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=SA&subtype=WH&htmlfid=UVW12372USEN#loaded
SO what makes a smart city?
Five of the following eight parameters make it a smart city
Smart Education
Smart Energy
Smart Building
Smart Healthcare
Smart infrastructure
Smart Technology
Smart Citizen
It is not in isolation that they would work, they would work as an Integrated one self. Are the technologies available to do such ? Yes, it is already in use and available. Is it possible to build and progress into a smart city in ten years. YES. It is not outlandish or an utopian dream.
Pick up a small city, for example Ponneri north of Chennai is selected to become one of the smart cities, A population of 24000 today. A good way to test your skills and improve upon the services. Once the city is developed to become smarter, it is a matter of time that the model can be replicated across India. The tools, the software would be in place. As they say the cookie cutter approach works once you have the first cookie baked and tested to be good.
What makes for a smart city?
As the word says "Smart" that is what it is, ICT as a means of providing an integrated platform is what a smart city would do best.
Integration is the key element to smartness, and this integration is possible through ICT. What it means is that we would leverage less resources to achieve the same level of quality of life or better.
You can envisage where you can get all your Government work done through the web, you can plan your trip to use the least amount of time or least of the resources. How best the city as a being manages its traffic. How efficiently you educate your students and also provide them with transport and also the necessary tools to leverage the technologies that makes the city smart.
As rightly said, there is no upper limit to the smartness, Stockholm invested first in Smart Mobility, a simple green corridor that is built if you travel at 40 kmph between traffic stops is a level of smartness. Using ICT at school to deliver curriculum is smartness.
IT is doing what you are already doing in a more efficient way. eGovernance is an area where the Government has a big way to let you know that they are building smart city communities, these can be , simple way to apply for your Birth Certificate, paying your bills online to be able to see how much you consumed and what is your Carbon footprint. The major problem is non availability of data to make informed decisions, and this is exactly what the smart cities would do.
Instead of an Ad-hoc decision you have the tools and data to take informed decision, the biggest difference between a smart and not smart city.
Would it be another boondoggle by the Government?
Saying Government always squanders money or the results are pathetically bad across the board is a wrong generalization.
A lot of smartness is being built into how we work and what we do on a daily basis. Many think that what has e-governance has to do with Smart City. A smart city is one which reduces resources required to provide the same level or higher level of services.
What is that makes a city smart, we can have parameters to say, that the passenger kilometer spent on pubilc transport as a measure, the time spent to get things done at a Government office. If you do not need to move out of your office/home to get a lot of things that you do today, it is smartness, why by investing on a server (Can be money.. I am using it here as a metaphor) if i reduce the number of motor-cyle or car kilometres, this is a level of smartness.
Think of health care delivery, or as you said the power that you consume, if i design smart cities to leverage the heat or cold of the local climate to power my systems or to cool my systems, I am making a smart decision.
As for building 100 smart cities in 10 years, many cities will transition to become smart cities, so having a vision to build smart cities is nothing wrong. May be in years following you might not differentiate between a smart city and not a smart city.
India has one major advantage, we have the people and resources to write code to run these "Internet of things". IoT is often an integral part of smart cities, and a seed money of 7000 crores is good enough, and that is the kind of money that would push the IBM, Siemens of the world to see and present a case as to how to build such cities.
Economics of building such cities will triumph and we will see that many an entrepreneur will see it as an opportunity. What these cities may do, is for it to trigger other cities to provide the same set of opportunities and services as the new smart cities. And people would demand such services, it is like a chain reaction, and instead of looking at it as a 7000 crores down the drain, take it as an impetus to start the reaction.
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